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9-Year-Old Boy Walks 9 Miles To Save Father After Tahoe Snowmobile Accident

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A 9-year-old boy is being hailed as a hero after he walked nine miles in the snow to save his dad’s life.

Over the weekend, Bode Beirdneau and his dad John Taylor were snowmobiling near Lake Tahoe when Taylor’s snowmobile tipped and trapped him under it.

Shaky cellphone video shows first responders arriving in the back country on Sunday after Bode showed them where to find Taylor.

The quiet strength he showed over the weekend was evident as he explained how his dad was trapped under the weight of his snowmobile.

“I jumped off my snowmobile and tried to dig him out,” Bode said. “I dug him out as fast as I could, but my fingers got numb.”

Unlike Tuesday, when Body sat down for a snack at the kitchen table, he and his dad were without food or water in the back country. He had no choice but to dig through the pain, and then set off for help.

“I was pretty nervous, and it was just a lot of pressure on me,” he said. “I didn’t know where to go, and it was hard.”

He would eventually flag down a tour group that radioed for help. Helicopters airlifted Taylor to the hospital where doctors performed emergency surgery on his broken leg.

Tisha Shaw struggles not to think about the thousands of what-if scenarios where everything could have gone wrong.

“All I could think of was he’s such a calm kid, he’s so grounded. He saved his dad’s life; does he know he saved his dad’s life?” she said.